The chief executive of easyJet is happy with the airline’s current fleet plans and said there is no risk it won’t have sufficient planes to meet its growth targets. Demand for new Airbus and Boeing planes is booming as travel rebounds after the pandemic, with airlines placing orders now to secure narrow bodies for later in the decade amid worries that the planemakers are nearly sold out.
Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, sealed a multibillion-dollar deal for as many as 300 Boeing jets earlier this month, helping to underpin its plan to almost double annual traffic to 300 million passengers by March 2034. EasyJet is due to receive 163 new Airbus aircraft over the next five years which CEO Johan Lundgren said was enough.
“We don’t see that we’re going to run out of, you know, metals and aircraft in order to satisfy the ambitions we have on growth,” he told reporters on Thursday. “We think we’re in a strong position with the order book that we have.” Of the 163 planes on order, a mix of A320neos and A321neos, some will replace older models, while some will be used to add new flights, Lundgren said, highlighting that 18 will arrive next year boosting capacity by 10%.
Supply chain issues mean both plane manufacturers are struggling to deliver new jets on time, but the CEO said that as one of the world’s largest A320 family customers, easyJet was well-placed. “Any challenges we would have from a delivery point of view, I think, we’re working very, you know, constructively with Airbus to mitigate those,” Lundgren said after easyjet reported first-half results.